Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

[ThunderKiss1965]

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16

With all the arguments over whether MAGA Republicans are fascists, I reread William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to see how much the rise of Hitler and the rise of MAGA smell similar. Conclusion: They do. This thread lists 10 ways. Please take a look.

1. A big lie about treachery is used to foment resentment. Nazis: We didn’t really lose World War I. It was a “stab in the back” by Jews and other "November criminals." MAGA: We didn’t really lose the 2020 election. It was a “steal” by politicians and Blacks in big cities.




2. There’s an obsession with purity of the culture. Nazis: “Racial mixture” was a threat to Aryan culture, Hitler wrote. MAGA: “Great replacement theory” says immigrants threaten white culture.



3. Chaos is something to be exploited, not addressed. Nazis: Economic distress is a great political opportunity. MAGA: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.



4. The super-rich bankroll the right-wing seizure of power. Nazis: Thanks to I.G. Farben, Deutsche Bank, Thyssen, Krupp, etc. MAGA: Thanks to the Mercers, Uihleins, DeVos, Thiel, etc.



5. Some people think the fascist threat is overblown. Nazis: While Hitler posed a major threat, some said he "ceased to be a political danger.” (2 weeks later, he was chancellor.) MAGA: While Trump poses a major threat, many people think it’s “just politics,” no worries.


6. There’s a cult of personality. Nazis: The German army made a pledge of loyalty to Hitler personally. MAGA: Trump’s supporters bill him as “the most moral president” in U.S. history.



7. Christianity is used to legitimize the movement. Nazis: “The party stands for positive Christianity.” MAGA: Trump is described as the “Chosen One” protecting American Christianity.





8. Books are the enemy. Nazis: Any book that “acts subversively on our future” must be burned. MAGA: “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” says a Virginia school board member.




9. An independent news media is the enemy. Nazis: Any newspaper that “offends the honor and dignity of Germany” must be banned. MAGA: The press is the “enemy of the people.”



10. Educators are pressured to be politically compliant. Nazis: Teachers took an oath to “be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.” MAGA: Florida’s DeSantis accuses teachers of “indoctrination” and pressures them to avoid references to America’s racist history and LGBTQ people.



I'm not saying that MAGA will end up as horrifically as Nazism. I am saying that America 2022 feels too much like Germany 1932, and I don't want to take the risk of watching MAGA cultism play out. We have to stop it now.



Why did Twitter put a “sensitive” warning on this thread? Who knows? My only theory is that it has a “hateful symbol”—a swastika on the cover of Shirer’s book about Nazism.

Season 121 Episode 4247 of everyone I disagree with is a Nazi.

 

[badger2]

What is the most recent date when visiting this URL? We see 2021.

x.com

twitter.com

If you're not an X member, can you still read the replies in post #1 of this thread?

 

[Sixties Fan]

Are you an X member? What is the current date that you see when visiting Jacob's page?

If you mean, do I pay anything? No.
You should be able to see it as I do.

Date:

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16
@MarkJacob16

3:59 PM · Sep 2, 2022

 

[Sixties Fan]

What is the most recent date when visiting this URL? We see 2021.

x.com

twitter.com

If you're not an X member, can you still read the replies in post #1 of this thread?

What are you after?

 

[badger2]

Yes, on Jacob's page, there is no swastika shown as it is in this thread. We can scroll down to read, just below Reagan's photo, in this order, points in the OP: 1,2,4,3,10 and 5. No more scrolling can be done past the photo of General Mark Milley, just below point #5.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Yes, on Jacob's page, there is no swastika shown as it is in this thread. We can scroll down to read, just below Reagan's photo, in this order, points in the OP: 1,2,4,3,10 and 5. No more scrolling can be done past the photo of General Mark Milley, just below point #5.

It is this tweet. It is from his account, as I showed. Tweet him and ask directly.

 

[badger2]

What are you after?

Truth. It's useless to tweet anyone. Can you read the 47 replies in the OP of this thread whether or not you're an X member? What should be established is the fact that certain others cannot read replies of any X member's page posted to USMB. Every X member page visited, from USMB or not, lacks a current post at the top of the page as in the old Twitter days (up to Jul 2023). Jacob's supposed latest post is seen as dated from 2021, which obviously is incorrect.

 

[badger2]

Yes, we can see the book cover now, though there are no 1.8K replies to be seen. The most current date shown is 2021. When did Jacob last post a message?

 

[dblack]

I just wish the end result would be the same. Treat communist POS liberals the same way Hitler treated the Jews.

Lots of you do. This is why, even though I think Trump isn't a fascist, many of the deplorables are.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Truth. It's useless to tweet anyone. Can you read the 47 replies in the OP of this thread whether or not you're an X member? What should be established is the fact that certain others cannot read replies of any X member's page posted to USMB. Every X member page visited, from USMB or not, lacks a current post at the top of the page as in the old Twitter days (up to Jul 2023). Jacob's supposed latest post is seen as dated from 2021, which obviously is incorrect.

Go bother someone else.
You either tweet him or you do not. Nothing to do with me.

 

[badger2]

Go bother someone else.
You either tweet him or you do not. Nothing to do with me.

Mammaries on a boar hog comes to mind.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

“The marvel of Wile E. Coyote isn’t that he eventually falls off the cliff but that he makes it so long running in midair,” writes Ben Jacobs in Slate, finding the perfect metaphor to describe the ignominious and abbreviated Speakership of Kevin McCarthy and its inevitable end. It’s also an apt description of Republican dysfunction and any all attempts to pretend that this is a party that either can govern or is even remotely interested in governing.

Kevin McCarthy became Speaker not because he knows what he’s doing, but because he is one of the most craven and cynical powerbrokers the Republican Party has ever known (which is really saying something given that his immediate predecessors include Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, Paul Ryan, and John Boehner.) But McCarthy didn’t last in part because he gave away too much to the fanatical extremists.

Jim Jordan is even less fit to govern than McCarthy, but in today’s GOP, that’s a selling point. He’s also a belligerent, rude, slinger of conspiracy theories who protects and enables sexual predators. Rounding out his list of credentials, he is also remarkably unaccomplished—during his sixteen years in Congress, Jordan has passed zero bills. His constituents vote for him because he prioritizes their culture wars, and, because he’s in a safe, egregiously gerrymandered seat in Ohio, he doesn’t have to appeal to a wider swath of voters.


Seriously, look at this thing:



Ohio’s 4th Congressional District, via Wikipedia
Jordan’s seat is safe in perpetuity, at least until Ohio gets its act together, but we now know definitively that he will never be Speaker: This afternoon, he was ousted as the nominee after a secret ballot. This is good news, of course. A Jordan Speakerships would have been the greatest stain on our politics since the Republican party elevated Donald Trump. And it might have been as dangerous.

Jordan is an ultra-extremist, a founder of the so-called Freedom Caucus. After losing even more votes during the second ballot yesterday, Jordan and his allies engaged in the same kind of bullying and threats Donald Trump has always trafficked in because like Donald, Republicans know they can only “win” by lying, cheating, and stealing.

We’ve heard some in the media as well as some Democrats, applaud the Republicans’ unwillingness to elevate the likes of Jim Jordan, a legislator who doesn’t know how to legislate, a government official who doesn’t believe in the government he serves, but that misses the point. In the three rounds of voting, a small minority of GOP congresspeople did not support Jordan, but we need to focus on the alarming fact that 200 of them put him within 20 votes of one of the three most powerful political positions in the United States. To talk about vote totals instead of who they’re voting for and what they’re willing to risk is to normalize what has been an aberrant, dangerous process.

And normalizing Republican extremism gives the party cover to do more harm to democratic norms and processes. It’s too early to tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the narrative crafted in the wake of Jordan’s ouster will be that the adults are back in charge of the Republican caucus when, in fact, there are no adults, no moderates, no pro-democracy Republicans left. At the moment, five Republicans have thrown their hat in the ring for the Speaker’s race. Of the three who were in office on January 6, 2021, Austin Scott (R-GA), Jack Bergman (R-MI), and Pete Sessions (R-TX), only Scott voted to certify the 2020 presidential election.

Tom Emmer (R-MN), Kevin Hern (R-OK) didn’t assume office until 2023 but they both oppose abortion, marriage equality, and the minimum wage; they both support Donald Trump.



Normalization cuts both ways. While obsessing about Biden’s age, the underreport, or entirely ignore, his accomplishments, making them seem ordinary or somehow underwhelming.

In reality, in the last two and a half years of his first term, Pres. Biden has

• Created over 13 million jobs, including over 750,000 manufacturing jobs
• Decreased the unemployment rate to a fifty-year low
• Appointed over 145 judges to the federal bench
• Passed the first major piece of gun legislation in 30 years
• Signed the Inflation Reduction Act which includes the largest investment in combating climate change
• Enabled Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies (for example, caps the price of insulin at $35 per month

This is a (very) brief snapshot and only covers Biden’s domestic achievements.

Even under normal circumstances, Biden’s first term would be considered stellar. Given what he inherited from the previous administration, it’s been nothing short of extraordinary. But the media never seem to put these accomplishments in the context of what Biden inherited from his predecessor: three intersecting and potentially democracy-destroying crises—the economy, COVID, and the Big Lie which led to the January 6th Insurrection.

Ignoring this context, undercuts the reality of Biden’s record.

The Democrats stand united, ready to govern. It would take only a handful of sane, pro-democracy Republicans (literally 5) to make Jeffries Speaker. But there are no sane, pro-democracy Republicans. Even those in swing districts that went for Joe Biden in 2020 would rather throw in their lot with the doomed Speakership of whoever the Republican is going to be than cross the aisle in order to establish a stable, bi-partisan coalition. Turning to Democrats for help in keeping the government open is what got Kevin McCarthy in the first place. Don’t expect any Republican who wants to get re-elected to make the same mistake.

The media would have it that it is the responsibility of the Democrats to save the Republicans from themselves in the interest of good governance. And this is part of the problem: Republican malfeasance, best exemplified by the behavior of the party’s standard-bearer, is not just expected but excuse; any failures at bi-partisanship are always laid at the feet of Democrats because it is they who are assumed to be the adults in the room. Even if the mess is entirely of the Republicans’ own making, it will always be the Democrats’ fault—just ask Kevin McCarthy.

This framing bolsters the narrative that Democrats are solely responsible for making sure the country runs properly while Republicans can do whatever the hell they want and behave as irresponsibly as they want and it will somehow still be the Democrats’ fault.

Hakeem Jeffries and the united Democratic caucus in the House have it exactly right—the Republicans, through their cynical, anti-government, policy-free agenda have brought this country to its knees rendering the us that much weaker in the face of unfolding and complex international conflicts. Make no mistake, both the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia and Israel and Hamas have serious, far-reaching implications for the future of this country. Steady, strong American leadership is more necessary than ever.

It is Republicans and Republicans alone who don’t care.

Beyond Schadenfreude

This is how it ends

marytrump.substack.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[dblack]

I just wish the end result would be the same. Treat communist POS liberals the same way Hitler treated the Jews.

Yeah. I guess there's no point in pretending otherwise now.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]